Baggage and other things that drag you down

Yay! We found a place to live! An apartment that isn't a tiny shit hole with pimps as neighbours. Well, we could have pimps for neighbours - you never know - but they'll at least be high class pimps who like animals. We're further north of downtown Toronto than what we initially wanted (10kms to be precise) but compromises must be made for the zoo. Very few places would accept 2 dogs and 2 cats, and we're on the ground floor which means the cats can run amok. Also, Poodle doesn't have to get dressed at 5 am to get Muggle down 10 flights so she can take her morning tinkle in the snow.

I think the Canadian estate agent person now thinks all South Africans are psychopaths because I told her we needed a 2 bedroom place, so our cats could have their own room. *blush* I apologize to all South
Africans for creating this impression. Feel free to call the Canadians up and tell them that it's just Poodle and me who are a few olives short of a martini.

So now that we have a place to stay, we need to turn our attention to furnishing it. When you move 14 610 kms across the world, should you pile all your crap into a big container and schlep it there with you? Or should you sell the lot of it, pack only 2 suitcases each, and start again on the other side?

Tricky, tricky.

You don't want to end up living like a student again. We're on the wrong side of our thirties, so this just won't do:




At the same time, I don't know if you've ever noticed how much absolute junk you can collect in 15 years. I've found things that I never knew we had shoved at the back of cupboards (mostly drunken party guests who never got around to leaving). One whole drawer in the kitchen is filled with peelers, pizza slicing thingies and ice cream scoopers... that I swear I've never seen before! How did they get there? Is there some kind of kitchen utensil exchange program happening in the world that I don't know about? A secret society of gadgets and thingies that take a gap year off after school to travel the world and see other people's cupboards? That would explain why I never have enough teaspoons.

So, we did some research and got a quote on a container to ship all our crap to Canada. We got the quote, vomited a lot at the price, and then decided it would be a very cathartic experience to free ourselves of all the baggage in our lives, and start all over again.

So we'll be setting off with just 2 suitcases each. Oh, and 4 pets. But they won't go in the suitcases, don't worry.